


A Redshirt Story

by songofsunset



Series: Redshirts (Wizard Trek) [1]
Category: Star Trek, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen, alien linguistics, magic in space, ye olde star trek pseudoscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 03:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6640264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofsunset/pseuds/songofsunset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Randall Owens, Communication Ensign aboard the Starship Enterprise, was beginning to regret visiting Engineering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Redshirt Story

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this just under three years ago on tumblr to encourage YW/Star Trek crossovers, and idk why it never made it over here. 
> 
> Leaving it a oneshot for now, but I wanna come back and add to it, so we'll see :)

Randall Owens, Communication Ensign aboard the Starship Enterprise, was beginning to regret visiting Engineering. Fascinating as he was sure the construction of an experimental propulsion engine was, it wasn’t exactly his idea of a pleasant shift off.  

Unfortunately, while he was off-shift in the records of the Enterprise, he could do nothing about the fact that he was on Errantry, and on Active status, and Engineering was where he was supposed to be. And sitting around in Engineering, monitoring intangible diagnostic spells but apparently doing nothing? Not while Lieutenant Commander Scott had anything to say about it.

And that’s how he found himself twisted sideways and covered up to the elbows in a glowing blue gel, holding two wires and a bio-gel pack _just so_. His so-called friend Jans assured him that the bio-gel wouldn’t cause any genetic defects. Probably. Randall was beginning to wish he’d worn gloves.

“Move that blue wire a bit to the left” Jans said, motioning with some sort of welding stick. “It needs to connect to the main conduit.”

Randall moved the wire, wrinkling his nose at the acrid smell of burning metal as Jans fused it into place. “How many more connectors do you need to fuse?”, he asked, watching the engineering crew rush back and forth as they assembled the engine skeleton.

“Only a couple dozen. Of course, you could always learn your way around a tool belt and help me out instead of just standing there,” Jans said, grinning and lifting his protective goggles to his forehead, where they made him look like an absurdly cheerful 4-eyed alien of some variety. Probably one of the ones on the edge of the Gamma Quadrant with all those ambitransitive verbs and glottal stops.

Randall opened his mouth, ready to lecture Jans about why exactly he was part of Communications rather than Engineering, when he heard a frantic pinging from his diagnostic spells. He turned his head to see what the problem was, and-

All the lights went out. For a brief moment there was darkness. There was a chorus of clicking noises as all the welding tools were firmly turned off for safety, and those of the crew who were lucky enough to be wearing headlamps turned them on. As the emergency lighting clicked on, Randall could see most of the engineering crew move to their emergency stations, or freeze where they were, waiting for orders. Captain Kirk’s disembodied voice came through the intercom with a loud whistle. “Bridge to Engineering, what seems to be the problem down there?”

“We’re not sure. Captain.” Scotty said from somewhere over by the diagnostic terminals. “It seems to be some sort of disturbance in the power dispersal to the basic functions of the ship. Most of the Secondary Hull has lost power, but all life-support systems still seem to be online. I’d guess the disturbance was magnetic in origin, but none of our sensors are indicating anything out of the ordinary, sir.”

“Keep working on it, Mr. Scott, and let me know if the status changes.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” said Scotty, shutting off the intercom and turning to his crew. “I want Section A running diagnostics on the power systems, Section B and C running diagnostics on all the other critical systems, and everyone else to finish assembling this engine and get it out of our way. Report to me as you have more information.”

“I’m in Section C,” Jans said, meeting Randall’s eyes. “Stay out of the way and I’ll find you when I’m done, okay?”

“I can do that. Will it cause any problems for me to let go of these wires?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, I’ll get Thompson to come take care of it for you. This should all be over pretty quick.” Jans trotted to his assigned terminal on the other side of the room, pausing briefly to have a word with a petite black woman piling spare parts into a compartment in the wall. She nodded, levered the compartment closed, and jogged over to where Randall was still covered in blue goo and holding wires in place.

“I’ve got this, Ensign.” she said, “You get out of the way”. Randall nodded gratefully and moved to the side of the room. He pulled up the holo-display for his manual and- oh dear, he was sure that the ambient energy fluctuations weren’t supposed to be that high. He expanded that portion of his readout and yes, they were well out of normal parameters. He muttered something under his breath that would have made a Romulan blush, then began scrolling through the manual’s information on similar disturbances, silently grateful that the holographic display wasn’t solid enough to have a problem with the blue goo all over his hands.

Five minutes later, after scrolling through information about magnetically charged nebulas, dust contamination in the main weapons systems, and what happens when someone tries to replicate diet coke and mentos at the same time, Randall found himself staring at an article about sentient life forms composed entirely of energy. He swore under his breath again.

“What sort of display is that?” said a voice from somewhere near his shoulder. Randall jumped and looked around, minimizing his manual by reflex. It was Thompson, the woman from earlier, looking up at him with narrowed eyes.

“Uh, it’s something custom. Ish.” Randall said, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t press him for more details.

“And what language was that? It’s nothing I’ve ever seen. Some sort of modified Arabic?”

“I’m in communications, I read a lot of obscure languages”. Truthful _and_ nonspecific. Randall was somewhat proud of himself, until it occurred to him that she shouldn’t have been able to see anything more than a novel, or a boring technical manual. “I- are you on errantry?”

In grand Starfleet tradition, Thompson raised an eyebrow. “I’m here to tell you that you should head back to your station. We’re up to Yellow Alert, and all nonessential personnel need to clear the area. Practice your Arabic somewhere else, kid.”

“Yes. I mean, wait, I mean-have we passed through any nebulas or non-typical fields of energy in the past several standard hours, uh-” He snuck a look at the cuffs of her sleeves, and swallowed, hard, straightening instinctively. “-Lieutenant?”

She eyed him critically. “You think that would have something to do with the disturbance, Ensign?”

“I think there’s a good chance of it, Lieutenant”.

“Are you getting readings that aren’t showing up on our sensors?”

“Something like that”, Randall said, taking a deep breath and pulling up the diagnostic page of his manual. “If you look here, here, and here”, he gestured at the glowing display, “You’ll see a contained paratypic energy field centered on Deck 36.” The diagrams fluctuated, showing updates in real time.

“So you’re saying there’s something specific happening down in Main Engineering?”

“It would appear that way, Lieutenant.”

“Can you duplicate these readings on our own sensors, Ensign?”

“I can try, Ma’am.”

“Use Jans’ Terminal, and get him to help you out with any of the commands or security codes. Let me know if you make any progress, and I’ll go report to Commander Scotty in the meantime. Are we clear Ensign?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Make it happen, Ensign”

Randall saluted, and walked over to Jans as quickly as decorum would allow. “Jans.”

Jans turned around. “Randall? What are you-“

“I’m supposed to use your Terminal to duplicate these readings”, Randall said, expanding his holo-screen. “Also, Lieutenant Thompson is kind of terrifying, and there might be some sort of sentient energy onboard.”

Jans blinked hard at the numbers on the holo-screen, and looked up at Randall like he wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see. “Don’t touch anything until you get that bio-gel off you”, Jans said, finally. “I’ll get you a towel.”


End file.
